20th Jul 2016 07:00
LONDON (Alliance News) - Wizz Air Holdings PLC on Wednesday reported growth in profit in the first quarter of its financial year, but noted a recent weakness in fares due to the weak pound after the UK's vote to leave the EU.
The Central and Eastern European-focused low-cost airline said pretax profit in the three months ended June 30 grew by more than half to EUR52.3 million from EUR34.4 million in the same period the year before.
This was on the back of growth in revenue to EUR364.9 million from EUR332.5 million, and a rise in the number of passengers carried to 5.8 million from 4.9 million. Load factor, meanwhile, increased by 0.7 percentage points to 89.5%.
On a more negative note, Wizz Air said weakness in the British pound following the Brexit vote has led to a weakness in fares in euro terms on routes to and from the UK. In response to this, it has started readjusting its network and halving its intended second-half growth to the UK. It will redeploy this capacity to other non-UK routes.
It did, however, confirm its underlying net profit guidance for the full year ending March 31, 2017, which is expected to be between EUR245 and EUR255 million.
"While Wizz Air is not immune to the recent challenges in our industry we believe our ultra-low cost base, diversified point-to-point network and ability to adjust capacity quickly when needed enables us to better respond to these challenges than many other European airlines and also means we are well placed to exploit market opportunities as they arise," Chief Executive Jozsef Varadi said in a statement.
By Karolina Kaminska; [email protected] @KarolinaAllNews
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